


I'm Not Your Professor

by Angel_With_A_Shotgun_6



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Engineering, Grad Student Castiel, M/M, Mutual Pining, Professor Castiel, Student Dean, Teacher-Student Relationship, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-08-15 15:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8061442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angel_With_A_Shotgun_6/pseuds/Angel_With_A_Shotgun_6
Summary: As a result of unusual circumstances, engineering student Dean Winchester ends up in the same class as one of his other instructors. Based on a real-life experience.





	1. Who's the New Professor?

**Author's Note:**

> Any reference to EE or "double E" stands for Electrical Engineering.

_Dear KSU engineering students,_

_We regret to inform you that the course ECE 724 – Analog Electronics will need to be cancelled for the Fall 2016 term because Dr. Parkins has unexpectedly left the university and there is no one that can teach the course on such short notice. We apologize for the inconvenience._

_Sarah Blake_

_ECE Staff Assistant_

  

What the fuck? Dean looked up from his phone to make sure the stoplight was still red before he quickly dialed his friend’s number, turning down the ACDC he was blaring loudly from his car. 

“Hey Charlie,” he said as soon as she picked up. “Did you get this weird email about a class being cancelled?” 

“An email?” 

“Yeah,” he answered as the light turned green. 

“Hold on.” 

Dean concentrated on the road while he waited for Charlie to read her email. He heard some typing on the other line before she spoke again. 

“ECE 724?” she finally responded. “Dean, we’re not enrolled in that class.” 

Dean rolled his eyes even though he knew she couldn’t see him. “Yeah I know. But it says Dr. Parkins left. Isn’t he supposed to teach our Circuits II class?” 

Charlie was a fellow engineering student as KSU, which was how he met and became friends with her in the first place. They had a lot of classes together the first two years of college but since Charlie is an Electrical Engineering major and Dean is a Computer Engineering major, this semester they only shared that one class. 

“I don’t know. What does your registration information say?” 

“I can’t check right now, I’m on my way to work,” Dean told her as he pulled into the parking lot of Roman Enterprises. He was working there as an IT representative while he was living in Lawrence for the summer. In his opinion, the company was pretty sketchy (he still didn’t know what they even do), but it was a job and it paid enough to cover his tuition at KSU. 

“It’s almost noon,” she said incredulously. “Aren’t you a little late?” 

“Eh,” Dean shrugged. “I have two weeks left. What are they going to do? Fire me?” Dean snorted. 

“Huh. You have a point,” she said distractedly, typing on her computer some more. “Okay, so I’m still registered for the class but we have a new professor. Castiel Novak.” 

“Castiel Novak?” he echoed back as he parked. “I’ve never heard of him. Look him up on RateMyProfessor," he told her, slamming his car door shut and walking towards the building. 

“So bossy,” she muttered but then began typing some more. “He’s not listed,” she informed him after a moment. “Maybe he’s new?” 

“Maybe.” Dean flashed his employee badge to the lock before opening the door to the lobby. 

“Holy crap,” Charlie said unexpectedly. 

“What?” 

“I looked him up on LinkedIn-“ 

Dean barked out a laugh. “Oh my god you’re such a stalker, Charlie.” 

“Oh shush!” she snapped. “Anyways. His profile says that he just barely graduated from KSU in December. Just his Bachelor's.” She paused. “Wow, and he’s already a professor. Isn’t that nuts?” 

Dean’s eyebrows shot up as he considered that information. “Yeah that’s pretty crazy. Maybe he’s, like, insanely good at teaching,” he suggested. 

“Or the administration was just that desperate,” she muttered pessimistically. 

“Yeah maybe,” Dean mused as he climbed the last set of stairs to the IT department floor. “He can’t possibly be worse than Dr. Parkins, though.” 

“True,” Charlie agreed. 

Dean and Charlie both had to take Circuit Theory I from Dr. Parkins in the spring and he was truly the worse professor Dean had ever had. He was terrible at explaining the concepts of the class and his tests were insanely hard. Dean barely got through that class with a C. If anything, he was extremely grateful that he wouldn’t have to take the second part of that course from him again. At least the new professor had the potential to be good, even if he might be a bit young and inexperienced. 

  

**Two Weeks Later**

Dean stepped into the classroom of his first class, which happened to be Circuit Theory II. He was a little disappointed to find out that he wouldn’t be sharing a lot of his classes with his Electrical Engineering friends like Charlie, but at least he had one class where they would all be together. Being a Computer Engineer major meant that Dean took classes from both the

Electrical Engineering program and the Computer Science program, so he had a lot of friends from both sides. But since his schedule had to be arranged in a unique manner to fit his classes together, he was usually on a different track than his fellow EE friends and so it was pretty rare for him to have all of his friends together in one class. 

But this semester, it happened. And that class was Circuit Theory II. 

Dean noticed his friend gathered together in the back of the class and strolled up to them with a grin on his face. He spotted Benny, Andy, Ash, and Victor. Damn, he sure missed those bastards. 

“Hey!” he greeted. 

“Dean!” they all echoed back. There was a chorus of “Hey!”s and “How are you?”s as they all caught up with each other about their summers and how much they dreaded the upcoming semester of coursework. 

“Dudes,” Andy addressed to all of them. “I am so not ready to take Physics II. Physics I sucked ass.” 

“Nah, physics ain’t so bad,” Dean interjected. “Trust me, you sophomores have it easy this semester.” 

“Oh that’s right,” Victor spoke up laying a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I forgot that Mr. Junior over here has already taken all of our _menial_ sophomore classes.” 

Dean smiled as he shook his head at Victor’s mocking tone. It was then that Charlie finally showed up. 

“What’s up, bitches?” She greeted with a sideways peace sign and took the seat next to Dean.

“Hey Charlie, took you long enough,” Dean remarked with a grin.

Charlie assumed a mocking tone as well. “Does my tardiness offend you, Majesty Junior?” She faked a little bow, which prompted his friends to all laugh.

“Fuck you guys,” Dean shot back as he turned around to face the front of the class. It was then that he finally noticed his professor standing in the front of the classroom setting up a slide that said “Welcome to ECE 511 – Circuit Theory II” on the projector. He was young, with dark messy hair and he was wearing a light blue button up and steel gray slacks that hugged his hips just right. When he looked up to glance at his students Dean was temporarily paralyzed by how shockingly blue his eyes were. Needless to say, his professor was hot.

“Alright, we can go ahead and get started,” hot professor addressed to all of them. The background chatter quickly quieted down as the students all turned to pay attention to him. Some looked pleasantly surprised, probably expecting to see Dr. Parkins. 

“Holy crap, he’s hot,” Charlie whispered to Dean. He nodded dumbly as he continued to stare at the guy. 

“My name is Castiel Novak,” hot professor introduced himself. “I will be teaching this course in replace of Dr. Parkins, who had to unexpectedly leave on short notice.” Professor Novak slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he leaned his hip against the front podium next to him. He looked casual. Like he belonged there. “I want to emphasize that I am not your professor. I’m just a grad student, so I’m your instructor. Which means you can call me by my first name, Castiel, or Instructor Novak if you prefer.” 

Castiel scanned his eyes across the faces of the students before he turned around to glance at the projected screen, using his clicker to switch to the next slide. This slide said “Syllabus” at the top and had some bullet points underneath it. 

“I’m assuming you’ve all taken the first part of this course. If you haven’t, you’re probably in the wrong class.” A few students chuckled. “Today I wanted to discuss the syllabus and my expectations from you individually. Since I only had about two weeks to prepare for teaching this course, I’m going to be using a lot of the material that Dr. Perkins had already arranged for this class, before he left.” Castiel paced to the other side of the room slowly. “However, my tests will be completely different. I actually took this class a few years ago from Dr. Perkins himself and I honestly thought his tests were ridiculous.” 

There was a chorus of agreement among the students who had taken Circuits I last semester. Castiel smiled knowingly. “It seems I wasn’t the only one who thought so.” 

A student in the front row raised her hand. “Yes?” Castiel nodded to her. 

“Are you going to keep the test open book like Dr. Perkins?” she asked. 

Castiel inclined his head with a regretful expression. “Unfortunately no. When I was taking this class I felt that one of the reasons Dr. Perkins made his tests so obscure and difficult was because he was compensating for the fact that the students could use their notes. And as another consequence, many of the students felt that they didn’t need to study for the test if they could use their notes. Which, inevitably, resulted in very poor test scores.” 

Dean nodded his head along with a few other students who suffered that fate last semester. It was exactly what happened to him. He never studied because he had false assurance that simply having his notes and his textbook with him would be enough to get him through the test. But the test questions would be so complicated and vague that Dean would have no idea where to even start. So part of him was relieved that that wouldn’t be the case this semester. But another part was disappointed that it wouldn’t be open book. 

“However,” Castiel continued. “I do think it’s unrealistic to test students without allowing them to use any resources because the real world isn't like that. When you have real world problems you _will_ be able to use whatever resources you want. So I’m going to allow you to bring one page of notes to every test. Front and back.” 

The students all nodded their heads in approval. Dean was liking this hot professor (ehem, instructor) more and more. 

Castiel spent the rest of class discussing other aspects of the class. The homework will be from the textbook, there will be online quizzes every week, yada yada yada. Dean zoned out about halfway through the class and instead just focused on the sound of the guy’s voice. It was surprisingly deep and rich for such a slim and nerdy dude. Although, with the way that button-up framed his upper body it was fair to say that he was certainly not unfit. Maybe he worked out. Or maybe he’s a runner. Whatever the case, Dean would really like to get his hands on that shirt and rip it off his – 

“Dean!” Charlie shoved his shoulder roughly to get his attention. 

“Huh?” Dean ripped his eyes away from the hot professor/instructor and looked at his friend in alarm. She was standing up with her backpack slung over her shoulder. 

“Get up! Class is over,” she said impatiently. 

Dean looked around and noticed that the other students were already filing out of the two doors. “Oh.” He quickly gathered up his notebook and shoved it in his backpack, standing up as well. 

“You were totally ogling Castiel, weren’t you?” Charlie teased as she followed him out of the classroom. 

“What? No I wasn’t,” he denied. 

“Yes you were! You were practically drooling!” Charlie bounced on her feet beside him. She always got excited when she got a glimpse of Dean’s overly repressed gay side. He had already come out to her as bisexual a year ago but he still had a preference for girls. He mostly just secretly admired men from a distance. 

“Okay so maybe I think he’s hot. So what? You said so yourself.” Dean tried to come off as casual. 

“Yeah but I’m gay so I was just commenting on his aesthetic beauty. But you,” she stepped in front of him and continued walking backwards so she could face him. “You have a crush.” 

“Nah,” he shook his head. Dean Winchester doesn’t get crushes. 

Charlie just smiled a secret smile as she let the subject drop. 

The rest of the day went pretty much the same (expect for the hot professor part). Syllabus day was always the most boring day of the semester. The professors all talked about the same thing and the classes just kind of blurred together. By the end of the day Dean could never remember which class was the one that didn’t accept late homework and which class had take-home exams. So Dean never paid a lot attention on the first day. The professors usually put their syllabuses online anyways so if he needed to reference them later in the semester he could. 

After his last class of the day Dean stopped by his apartment to drop off his stuff before he headed over to Benny’s place where his friends were throwing a little get-together party to kick off the semester. That was one thing he missed while he was living at home in the summer. His engineering friends sure knew how to throw a party. 

When he walked in he was immediately engulfed in a bear hug. “Hey brutha,” Benny greeted him with his signature southern drawl. 

Dean grinned as he patted his friend’s back. “Hey, how’s it goin’ Benny?” 

Benny and Dean were roommates last year when they both lived in the dorms. They got along great and really connected over the fact that they were both Computer Engineer majors, even though Benny was a year behind Dean. 

“I’m good, man.” Benny led the way to his couch where he offered Dean a beer. There were a few other people mingling around the apartment and Dean could hear some quiet music playing from the stereo. Since it was only 4:30 pm the party was obviously not in full swing yet. “I never got the chance to catch up with you, brutha. How was your summer?” 

“It was good,” Dean nodded. “I got to move back home, mess around with my little brother, Sammy. I worked a bit in IT.” 

“Oh yeah?” Benny raised an eyebrow. “Internship?” 

“Not quite,” Dean shook his head. “I’ll get an internship next summer though. The companies around Lawrence don’t accept interns with less than a junior status.” 

Benny hummed as he considered that. “I got my eye on a few companies back in Louisiana that might hire me in the summer.” 

Dean took a sip from his beer. “Well, if you’ve got connections on the inside you have a much better chance of getting the job.” 

“Unless I’ve got a killer resume,” Benny grinned. 

“That only gets you so far, my friend,” Dean countered. 

They went on like that for awhile, discussing the best methods to get a job and what attributes mattered the most to potential employers. Gradually, some of their other friends joined the discussion and interjected their own opinions. As the night went on, more and more people showed up to the little party and the people present got steadily more drunk. Pretty soon the internship discussion had completely derailed to another argument that Dean didn’t even know the point of. But it didn’t matter because he was surrounded by his friends and they were all arguing in good fun. 

“I’m telling you!” his friend Ash (a sophomore EE student) exclaimed from his standing position on top of the coffee table. “C++ is the only programming language that we really need. It can replace any other language!” 

“You’re crazy!” Jo (a Computer Science junior) yelled back, standing up as well. “You can’t use C++ for,” she waved her beer around as she tried to supply a contradiction. “For markup languages! C++ can’t function like HTML!” 

“But it could!” Ash claimed as he pointed at her. “With just a little more development C++ could function as any language!” 

“No that’s impossible,” Victor interjected from his spot on the ground. “There are some languages that were specifically designed for the software it functions for. For example, Latex—“ 

“No, Latex isn’t a language,” Charlie argued. “It’s a type-setting system that converts text into a formatted document.” 

“But it has to use a compiler to interpret the text,” Victor pointed out. “Which means that text is a custom programming language that was designed for _just_ that software.” 

Dean had been watching his friends drunkly scream at each other for about an hour before he remembered that he should probably head home. He checked the time and cringed when he saw that it was already 11:30 pm. 

He stood up and headed towards the door. “Hey, guys I’m heading out,” he called out to them. 

“Whaaat?” Charlie yelled back. “Whyyy?” 

“I’ve got a class tomorrow at 9 am,” he answered. 

“Oh man, that sucks brutha,” Benny responded. “Get home safe.” 

They all said goodbye to him as he closed the door behind him. Dean swayed a little on his feet from the alcohol but he knew it was short walk to his apartment. He just hoped he wouldn’t be too hung-over in the morning when he had to go to his only Tuesday class, Microcomputers Systems Design. He knew it was going to be his hardest class because he was technically supposed to take it as a senior. To this day Dean still curses the name of the advisor he got assigned as a freshman who didn’t know what the hell she was doing. His schedule got completely fucked up so now he was stuck taking sophomore, junior, and senior-level classes simultaneously. And the worst part was that none of his friends would be in his Microcomputers class with him so he wouldn’t be able to rely on the support of his friends to help him pass the class. 

Hopefully he’ll be able to befriend a nice senior who can help him out. 

  

When Dean walked into Microcomputers Systems Design the next morning he immediately scanned the classroom to find a potential smart person he could be friends with. But he did a double-take when he spotted a familiar mop of dark hair sitting in the middle of the center row. 

“No way,” he said to himself as he maneuvered through the rows of tables to get a better look at the student currently hunched over some papers. His suspicions were confirmed when Dean stopped next to him and the guy glanced up. 

It was Castiel Novak. His hot instructor for Circuits II. 

Fucking _score_. 

Dean flashed his winning smile. “Hey, is this seat taken?” 

Castiel looked slightly startled by the question. “Oh. No, go ahead,” he gestured, so Dean pulled out the seat and sat down. 

“Dean Winchester,” he introduced as he held his hand out. 

“Castiel Novak,” Castiel returned the greeting as he shook Dean’s hand. It was interesting that he felt the need to introduce himself as well, Dean mused. Maybe he didn’t recognize Dean from his class. 

Dean flashed another smile as he leaned over to pull a notebook and a pen from his backpack. “So Castiel,” he said casually. “Did you have a good summer?” 

Castiel appeared surprised that Dean was still talking to him so it took him a moment to reply. “Yes, I suppose so. I did a lot of research.” 

“Oh yeah? What kind?” Dean asked. 

“Energy systems, mostly. My team was assigned to research ways to minimize the carbon emissions from large and complicated power systems." 

“Oh that’s cool,” Dean remarked. “Did you join the research team just for fun or…” he purposely trailed off. 

“No, it’s part of my graduate program,” Castiel supplied. “Although I did greatly enjoy the research.” 

“Ah, you’re a grad student?” 

Castiel nodded. 

“So what are you doing in this class?” Dean asked as he gestured to all of the seniors filling the seats around them. 

“I’m a double E student,” Castiel explained. “This class wasn’t required for my Bachelor’s but I’ve decided to take it anyways to expand my technical knowledge.” He shared a private smile. “That’s the great thing about grad school, you take classes because you want to, not because you have to.” 

The professor called for their attention just then but Dean was still thinking about his conversation with Castiel. He still couldn’t believe that he was taking the same class as one of his other instructors. Not only that, but it was his insanely hot instructor that he may or may not have a crush on. Maybe if he could play this right, Castiel might be willing to help him out with the homework for this class. But would he think that was inappropriate since he was also his instructor? Plus, he might be too busy holding office hours and preparing lectures to be able to help Dean. 

Just as Dean was debating whether he should target someone else in the class to be his study friend, the professor announced something very interesting. 

“For programming assignments you are expected to work with a partner. If you can’t find a partner by the end of the day, you can post on the discussion board that you are looking for a partner and hopefully someone will help you out.” 

Before he knew what he was doing, Dean was leaning in to whisper to Castiel. “Hey, do you want to be my partner?” he asked without thinking. 

Castiel looked once again surprised by the request. “Oh. Um, sure, okay.” 

Just like that, all of Dean’s previous hesitations were discarded from his mind and he grinned at the possibilities this could present. A hot instructor as his partner? Maybe this class won’t be so bad after all.


	2. A Familiar Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another short little chapter since I happened to have a lot of free time this weekend. Also, I've realized that this story is basically becoming one giant commentary about my experiences as a Computer Engineering student, so be prepared for a lot of engineering-related references and discussions.

Castiel replayed his interaction with Dean Winchester over and over in his mind on the way home from class. After the lecture had finished they exchanged contact information and told each other their availability to meet up for the programming assignments. They agreed that weekends would work best since Castiel was really busy during the week attending meetings and holding office hours for the undergrad class he was teaching. At that comment, Dean had winked at him mysteriously and told him to “give those students plenty of attention.”

By the time Castiel arrived at the apartment he shared with his brother, he was still puzzled by Dean’s interest in him and why an attractive engineering senior would be so eager to be his partner in the first place. It’s true that he was a grad student so that might lead another student to believe he would be more competent with the homework, but how did Dean even know he was a grad student before talking to him? And it wasn’t as though he was the only grad student taking the class. Castiel had spotted a few of the grad students from his research group among his classmates and one of them had even glanced back at him questionably when the professor announced that they could work in pairs. So perhaps the better question to ask was why Castiel so readily agreed to be the attractive senior’s partner when he didn’t even know who he was.

_Oh that’s right, it’s because he’s attractive,_ a little voice in his head told him.

Castiel sighed to himself as he accepted his fate of having to interact with yet another unattainable crush for an entire semester.

“Hey bro, how was class?” his brother Gabriel called out from the living room. 

Castiel strode inside and dumped his shoulder bag onto the couch next to his brother. “It was good. I think Microcomputers will be a nice challenge.”

“Pfft. You’re such a nerd, taking classes for the ‘challenge’,” Gabriel said flippantly, reaching into the bag of chips on his lap and munching on them loudly.

Castiel joined his brother on the couch, pulling out some lecture notes. “That is the purpose of grad school,” he told him. 

“Yeah, well,” Gabiel stood and stretched slowly, “when I graduate I’m getting the hell out of dodge.”

“Speaking of graduating, don’t you have any classes you should be attending right now?”

“Nope,” Gabriel grinned, walking into the kitchen. “Tuesdays are my free days.” 

Castiel hummed distractedly as he continued to poor over the notes that Dr. Perkins left for him. He was certainly not prepared to teach an undergrad lecture two weeks ago when he got the call from Sarah Blake asking, practically begging, for him to take Dr. Parkin’s place as an instructor. But she said that the administration was desperate and that they had gotten a lot of positive reviews about Castiel from the students he had TA’d for in the past. Plus, the job would be able to pay for his graduate studies, so in the end it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. But right now he suspects he must have been crazy to accept this position. Two weeks was nowhere near enough time to recall a semester’s worth of information he’d learned three years ago as well as organize his thoughts into comprehensive lecture notes for his students. Of course, the material for this class was fairly basic (it was a sophomore-level class after all), but in order to teach other students he was going to have to become an expert of the material and anticipate every possible question to avoid looking like an incompetent ass in front of forty undergrads. All in all, Castiel was feeling pretty stressed.

“Here you go, bro!” Gabriel interrupted his thoughts as he placed a plate of steaming pasta on the coffee table in front of him. “Lunch is served!”

Castiel smiled up at his brother gratefully. “Thank you, Gabriel, I really appreciate it.”

Gabriel grinned back. “No problem! I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now with the undergrad class your teaching.” He shrugged as he moved back over into the kitchen. “I’m just trying to help out however I can.”

It was times likes these that Castiel was really grateful to have such a supportive and caring younger brother, even if he did occasionally pull some childish pranks on him. Castiel moaned in appreciation as he took a bite of his brother’s pasta. A least his culinary schooling was proving useful.

 

After a long night of reviewing notes, re-reading the textbook, and picking out homework problems, Castiel woke up the next morning feeling properly prepared to leach his first lecture about circuit theory (the first day didn’t really count, that was just going over the syllabus). He had to attend a quick meeting with his advisor right before class, though, so by the time he walked in most of the students were already settled down and chatting away. He walked past the rows of students to start setting up at the front podium when something, or rather someone, caught his eye. There was a student watching him from the front row who looked very, very familiar and it took Castiel a moment to figure out who he was. The student flashed a grin at him and he suddenly remembered. Dean Winchester. Attractive senior from Microcomputers. 

“Dean,” Castiel faltered on his way to the podium, stopping in front of Dean’s desk. “What—“ Castiel tilted his head and considered the possible reasons for Dean to be here. “Are you in this class?” he asked, very confused.

“Yup,” Dean just grinned wider.

Castiel was about to ask a follow up question when he felt a sudden tap on his shoulder.

“Instructor Novak, would it be alright if I used the second edition of the textbook instead of the third?” a student asked.

Castiel forced himself to forget the Dean situation so he could address the student’s concern. “That wouldn’t be wise,” he told him. “The homework problems will be assigned from the third edition and unfortunately the second edition uses different problems. I’m sorry if this is an inconvenience,” he added apologetically.

“Oh okay. Thanks.” The student turned away to sit back down and Castiel glanced at the time. It was 9:02.

Not wanting to delay the class any longer, he quickly went to set up his slides on the projector and turned his attention back to the class. “Okay let’s begin.”

For the first half of the lecture Castiel went through a quick review of the material that should have been covered in Circuit Theory I. He could tell that the students had already learned it because they all stared at him with the familiar dead-eyed look of complete boredom. Well, all of them except Dean Winchester, who stared at him as though everything he said was the most fascinating thing in the world, with eyes tracking his every movement. Castiel tried not to let himself get distracted with trying to figure what Dean was even doing in this class, but it was becoming really difficult to stay focused when he kept stumbling over his words every time he was caught in Dean’s gaze. 

“And that concludes the review portion of the class,” Castiel announced, moving behind the podium to set up the next slides. “Any questions?”

When he glanced up he saw Dean raise his hand. “Yes?”

Dean cleared his throat. “Are we going to be analyzing a lot of op amps for this class?”

Castiel tilted his head slightly as he quickly recalled all of the course material in his mind. “We are going to re-introduce op amps near the end of the course but most of the material you’ll be learning will deal with alternating current and sinusoidal waves. So, in short, no, you won’t have to analyze a lot of op amps this semester.”

Dean smirked. “Good. Op amps suck.”

A few of the students chuckled and the corners of Castiel’s mouth pulled up into a smile as well. “Well, I’m sure one day you’ll learn to appreciate the value that op amps have.”

Dean continued to smirk at him as Castiel turned his attention to the rest of the class. “Any other questions?” He was faced with blank looks across the classroom. “Good. Let’s move on.”

 

Castiel was gathering up his things after the conclusion of class when he heard a familiar voice voice say from a distance, “You guys go ahead, I’ll catch up.” A moment later the voice was right behind him. “Hello Instructor,” Dean greeted cheerfully. 

Castiel turned around to face him. “Dean, yes, I’ve been wanting to ask you—“

“How I’m taking a sophomore-level class and a senior-level class at the same time?” Dean guessed.

“Well, yes,” Castiel admitted sheepishly. 

Dean shrugged. “My schedule got flipped around. I took Microcontrollers as a sophomore.”

That made sense. Microcontrollers was a prerequisite for Microcomputers. Which means he probably took that class as a sophomore in replace of Circuit Theory. “Ah. So you’re a junior?” 

“Yup,” Dean confirmed, flashing a smile.

Castiel mentally adjusted his initial assessment of Dean from Attractive Senior to Attractive Junior. 

Suddenly Dean’s smile disappeared as a thought occurred to him. “Do you think it’s inappropriate to be partners for Microcomputers?” he asked with a worried expression. “Since you’re my professor, and all?”

Castiel chewed his lip as the considered the question. He should say yes, because that would give him a perfect excuse to back out of the partnership. But at the same time, he didn’t really want to. Dean was so attractive. But that was part of the problem. And now since he’s one of his undergrad students that just makes him even more unattainable. He should definitely say yes.

“No,” Castiel found himself answering. “I mean, technically I’m not your professor. So it should be okay.” 

Dean flashed him another brilliant smile. “Sweet. See you tomorrow,” he waved, turning around and walking out the door.

What has Castiel just gotten himself into?


	3. The First Assignment

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize If you don’t have a deep understanding of binary and hex numbers because you’ll probably be very confused about the assignment Dean and Cas work on in this chapter. But no worries, you’ll still get to enjoy watching them struggle.

Dean walked into Microcomputers the next morning in a good mood. The majority of his week was spent hanging out with his friends and goofing off, which was pretty normal behavior for engineering students during the first few week of classes. His friends liked to take advantage of the low workload while they could, because once the homework hit, the only parties they’d have time to throw are study session parties.

_Speaking of homework…_

Dean dropped his backpack onto the desk space beside Castiel, who didn’t notice him approach. “Heya Cas,” Dean greeted cheerfully.

Castiel startled slightly at the sound. “Ah, hello Dean.” He smiled up at him briefly before returning his gaze back to the laptop in front of him.

Dean busied himself with pulling out some books from his bag. “So have you looked at the first assignment for this class, yet?”

“Not yet,” he answered distractedly. “When is it due?”

“Next Tuesday. But I was thinking we could get together this weekend to work on it.”

Castiel nodded slowly. “That’s a good idea. That way we can get a head start on it.”

Yeah, a head start. It had nothing to do with the fact that Dean was desperately eager to spend some time alone with his sexy instructor. Dean could invite him over to his apartment, maybe they could have a few drinks--

“We can work in a study room,” Castiel interrupted Dean’s thoughts. “There’s one available in the library at 1 pm on Saturday. Shall I reserve it?” he asked.

_I guess that works, too_ , Dean thought glumly.

“Okay sure, go ahead,” Dean replied.

Castiel typed some information into his laptop and nodded his head decisively. “It’s now reserved.” He turned his head to glance at Dean. “I would have offered that we use my office but I can’t guarantee that we won’t be interrupted.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “A study room is just fine, Cas.”

Castiel tilted his head and looked like he was about to say something else but was interrupted by the professor calling for their attention to begin lecture. 

 

Throughout the lecture Dean noticed that Castiel stayed glued to his laptop, hardly ever glancing up at the professor. Not that Dean could blame him; the material being covered was mostly review about binary numbers and logical operations, anyways. Even Dean was pretty bored.

“For your first assignment, you will be solving a number of puzzles in C using bit manipulations,” the professor announced, peaking Dean’s interest. “But you have quite a few restrictions. For one, you can only use the following operators: _not_ , _or_ , _and_ , _xor_ , _add_ , and _shift_. You cannot use any loops or other control constructs, you cannot use any integer constants bigger than 0xFF, you cannot call any other functions, and you can only use the integer data type. The puzzles are rated on a difficulty scale of 1 to 4 in which 4 point puzzles will be worth more for your final score. Once again, you are expected to work with a partner but you must both turn in your own copies of the bits.c file.”

Most of this information wasn’t new to Dean, since he had already skimmed through the description for the assignment. There were only 8 puzzles so it shouldn’t be too hard to get through all of them in one Saturday, especially since he had a grad student as his partner. Dean glanced over in Castiel’s direction and noticed that he was now looking up at the professor, but in a vaguely-listening sort of way. Dean mentally laughed. _Yeah_ , he thought, _this assignment will definitely be easy_.

 

“Hey Dean!” Jo called out to him on his way to Discrete Math on Friday. “Are you ready for Game Day tomorrow?” 

“Wait, the Homecoming Game is tomorrow?” Dean asked as Jo fell into step beside him.

“Uh yeah!” Jo looked at him like he was crazy. “We’re all going to head out early tomorrow to get good seats. You coming?”

“Aw fuck,” Dean groaned. “I can’t. I made plans to work on a programming assignment with my partner tomorrow.”

Jo snorted. “Already? It’s the first week of school.”

“Yeah I know,” Dean grumbled. “I was trying to impress him or something.”

Jo laughed and shook her head. “You’re a total nerd, Dean. Just accept it.”

“If you save me a seat I’ll try to make it in time for the game,” Dean changed the subject.

“But you’ll miss all of our pre-game shenanigans!” Jo wined.

“I’m getting too old for your shenanigans, Jo.”

Jo punched his arm. “We’re the same age, dick.”

Dean laughed.

 

The next day, when Dean walked into the study room that Castiel had reserved and saw that his partner had not arrived yet, Dean settled down at the desk and waited for him. It wasn’t until about 1:10 pm that Castiel came bustling into the study room, breathing deeply. “I’m so sorry I’m late.” He shut the door behind him. “My advisor’s meeting went a bit long.”

“No worries, man,” Dean smiled widely at him. It was kind of sexy to see him like this, all flustered and out-of-breath. “You have meetings on Saturdays too?”

“Occasionally, yes,” Castiel answered as set down his bag on the desk and pulled out his laptop. “I practically live on campus.”

“Is that life as a grad student or life as an instructor?” Dean asked.

“Both.” Castiel grabbed the DVI cable connected to the little TV monitor suspended on the wall and plugged it into his computer. “I was not expecting for my schedule to become so busy, but I promise I won’t let that interfere with our partnership,” Castiel assured him. 

Dean shrugged. “It’s okay if it does. You can just text me if something ever comes up and we’ll reschedule. No big deal.”

Castiel smiled at him sincerely. “That’s very kind of you, Dean. And you’re welcome to switch partners if you ever feel that I’m not available enough. I promise I won’t be offended.”

_Switch partners? That’s definitely not gonna happen._

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”

The TV screen was now displaying Castiel’s laptop so Dean turned to watch as his partner opened up the Microcomputers assignment.

“Well,” Castiel began. “Let’s go ahead and start with the first one. It’s only rated as a 1.”

“Yeah, that one’s pretty easy,” Dean told him. He read from the screen, “’Create an _and_ operation using only _not_ and _or_.’”

“Okay,” Cas nodded. “Well if you flip the bits for both of the integers and then _or_ them together then that would be equivalent to an _and_ operation.”

“Exactly.”

Castiel typed out the code for their solution and tested it using a program included with assignment. No surprise, their solution passed.

“Okay, now for the next one.” Dean leaned forward in his seat to view the screen. “’Extract byte n from word x. Bytes numbered from 0 to 3’,” he read. 

Castiel squinted at the screen. “So if we’re given a 32-bit word and we want to extract an 8-bit byte then we need to somehow _and_ our word with another word that only has ones in the byte position we want. And then we need to shift it over.”

“Or we could shift the word first and then _and_ it with 0xFF,” Dean suggested.

“Yes, that’s even better,” Castiel agreed. “So first we need to determine how many bits to shift it by.”

“Well that’s going to be determined by n.” Dean stood up and turned around to face the whiteboard behind him. He grabbed a dry erase marker and wrote a random 8-digit hex number. “Because if we want byte 1, then we want to shift it by 2 hex digits.” He wrote the same hex number beneath it, shifted to the right by two. “And if we want byte 2, we shift by 4, and so on.” 

“But the operator shifts by bits, not half-bytes,” Castiel pointed out.

“Right.” Dean turned back to the white board. “To shift one hex digit, that’s shifting by 4 bits. So in the end, we want to shift the entire word by n times 8.”

“Ah.” Castiel leaned back in his chair. “And we can multiply n by shifting it.”

“Yeah, shifting it by 3,” Dean supplied. He set the marker down and rejoined Castiel at the table, where he was typing up the solution they created.

“Well, let’s see if it works.” Castiel compiled the code in the other terminal and ran the professor’s test. It passed.

“Awesome,” Dean grinned. “These aren’t so bad.”

“Well, that was only a level 2 puzzle,” Castiel added.

“Aw come on, professor,” Dean teased, leaning back and reaching his arms up to cross behind his head. “Have a little faith.”

“I’m not your professor,” Castiel muttered, looking back at his laptop. “’Number 3,’” he read. “’Shift x to the right by n, using a logical shift.’” Castiel furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. 

“Yeah that was the one I didn’t really get,” Dean said. “Like, if it’s telling us to do a shift, why can’t we just do a shift? Why is this puzzle rated as 3?”

“I’m not sure,” Castiel mused. “I wonder what happens when we try it.”

He entered the code and ran the test, which failed. It outputted that the expected result of shifting the 0x80000000 by 4 was 0x08000000 but the actual result was 0xF8000000.

“That’s odd.” Castiel squinted at his laptop. “Why is our function inserting ones in the beginning when we shift it?

Dean stared at the screen for moment, trying to understand why the shift was being a douche. “Oh my god,” he groaned when he realized what happened, running a hand down his face. “Two’s complement,” he said as explanation.

“Two’s complement?” Castiel looked between Dean and his laptop, still confused. “Why would that—Ohhh,” he said, his face lighting up in understanding. 

Two’s complement was a method for binary numbers to keep track of whether they were positive or negative. When the most significant bit was a 1, the number was negative. When a negative number got shifted to the right, the ones carried over in order to maintain the negative property of the binary number. 

“So for this puzzle, when we shift the word, we want zeroes to replace the shifted bits, even when there’s a one in the front,” Dean interpreted.

“Like an unsigned int,” Castiel nodded. 

“So we need to find a way to get rid of those extra ones after we shift it,” Dean concluded

They both sat there for a few seconds trying to think of a solution. Castiel drummed his fingers on the table and stared at the problem with a concentrated look while Dean swiveled his chair around in circles, tossing the whiteboard marker in the air and catching it. 

“What if…” Dean led, “we can create a number with all ones except for the most significant bits, and then _and_ it with our shifted number? That would get rid of the extra ones.”

Castiel crossed his arms and nodded solemnly. “Yes, if I remember correctly, I believe that is called a mask. But in this case, I’m not sure how we can create one without using any constants larger than 0xFF.”

“Damn, that’s right.” Dean threw his head back to stare at the ceiling, running a hand down his face. There were so many stupid restrictions for this assignment.

“But…” 

Dean looked through his fingers to peak at Castiel hopefully.

“I suppose there’s nothing stopping us from shifting 0xFF over by two and then adding 0xFF to it again,” Castiel continued. “And we can just keep doing that until we have our mask.”

Dean threw his hands up in delight. “Cas, you’re a genius!” he exclaimed.

They went on like that for awhile, slowly getting through the puzzles, one-by-one. They were able to collaborate well for most of them, using their combined knowledge to find the solutions, but for the more difficult problems they would sometimes get stuck and disagree on how to proceed. 

“That’s not going to work, Cas! Because what if we consider the case where x is negative and y is positive? Then according to your algorithm…” Dean scribbled some quick calculations on the white board. “It’s going to return false, even though x is obviously less than y!” Dean gestured wildly at the board, which was, at this point, completely filled with various diagrams, charts, and random numbers.

Castiel narrowed his eyes at Dean, unconvinced. “But what are the chances that our function will be tested against that case?”

Dean slapped a hand to his face. “Cas.” He inhaled slowly. “Have you not been paying attention to any of his other tests? He literally uses the same number for all of them.” He pointed to the number 0x80000000 on the board, which happened to be a negative number.

Castiel pursed his lips in irritation. “Well, we’re not going to be able to find another solution.” He jabbed his pencil into the paper in front of him. “This is the only one that will work,” he concluded with confidence. 

Dean and Cas both stared at each other stubbornly for a few moments. Dean tapped the white board marker against his palm as he tried to think of a way around the problem.

“Listen,” Dean sighed, “what if we don’t need to find a different solution? What if we can consider the problem on a case-by-case basis?”

Castiel furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“Like, what if we can somehow check to see if x is negative and y is positive, and then alter our return value based on that?” Dean asked, growing more optimistic as the idea developed in his head.

“I…suppose that could work,” Castiel answered hesitantly. “But how do we do that?”

“Like this.” Dean stood up and erased a chunk of the white board, writing down his own solution. “We take the first bits of both x and y and _xor_ them together.” He wrote _diff = bitX ^ bitY_ on the board and turned to glance at Cas, who was watching Dean with an intense expression. “This will tell us if x and y have different signs,” Dean explained. “Then, we _and_ it with the first bit of x. If this value is true, then we know that x is positive and y is negative, which covers case 1.” He wrote _case1 = diff & bitX_. “For case 2, we just need to check that x and y are the same sign and then use we can use your algorithm.” _case2 = !diff & algorithm_. “If either of those cases are true, we return true.” _return (case1 | case2)_. 

Dean stepped back to re-read his final solution before nodding his head in satisfaction and turning around to grin triumphantly at Castiel, who was leaning forward on his elbows and staring at Dean’s solution with a tilted head and a furrowed eyebrow. Dean stood there, waiting expectantly for Castiel to contradict him. After a few moments, he finally asked, “But what if x is positive and y is negative?”

Dean blinked at him. “Then x isn’t less than y.”

Castiel blinked back.

“So it doesn’t need to return true,” Dean explained slowly.

Cas glanced back at the board and narrowed his eyes for about two seconds before his face suddenly lifted in clarity. “Dean, this is brilliant,” he told him.

Dean grinned sheepishly at the ground. “Nah…”

“It is,” Castiel nodded vigorously, beginning to type out the solution into the function to test it. He paused briefly to give Dean a meaningful look. “I wouldn’t have been able to come up with this.”

“Well,” Dean sighed, dropping into his chair at the table. “All in a day’s work.” He watched Castiel test the solution and sighed in relief when it passed. That was the last puzzle, which meant that they were finally done with this stupid assignment. Dean was exhausted from the amount of thinking he had to do today and he was looking forward to being able to meet up with his friends and catch the end of the game. He checked the time on his watch and groaned when he saw that it was already 6 pm. 

Castiel closed the lid of his laptop and smiled earnestly at Dean. “Good job, Dean. We finished.”

Dean chuckled dryly and started packing his things away. “Why do I feel like you’re about to give me a gold star or something?”

“Ah.” Castiel looked away, abashed. “I’m sorry if I sometimes come off as sounding more like an instructor, rather than a peer. Since I fulfill both of those roles for you, it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two.”

Dean nodded at that, standing up. “Yeah, I get it man. Sometimes I don’t know how casual I should act around you, ‘cause I usually become friends with the people I work with on assignments but I’m not sure if that would be—“

“We can be friends,” Castiel interrupted unexpectedly.

“Oh,” Dean replied, taken aback. “Okay, that’s cool.” Dean stood there for a moment, not really sure what to say. “You going to the game?” he asked.

“Ah, no I’m not much of a football fan,” Castiel answered. “I’ve never even been to a game.”

“For real? Man, they’re so fun.” Dean grinned. “I’m actually heading over right now if you want to join,” he offered.

Castiel look genuinely shocked at the offer. “Oh. Well, ah, I really shouldn’t,” he stammered. “I have some other work I should do.”

“Alright, no problem,” Dean flashed another smile as he edged out the door. “I guess I’ll see you Monday, then.”

Castiel smiled back. “Yes. Bright and early.”


	4. A Tentative Friendship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this is incredibly late. I've had a crazy semester. But finally, I have a break! So I'm hoping to whip out the rest of this fic while I have the time these next two weeks. But we'll see.

“Hey Dean, did you catch the game on Saturday?”

Dean smacked Ash’s outstretched hand on his way past his desk. “Yeah man, I went with some of the CS kids.” He sat down in the seat behind him.

Ash swiveled in his seat to grin at him. “Did you see that last touchdown? It was legendary!”

“Ryan Durstan was on fire last night,” Victor interjected from Dean’s left.

“Our whole backfield is amazing this year,” Charlie added.

“KU didn’t stand a chance. Those guys suck.”

His friends all laughed in agreement but Dean felt the need to defend his hometown’s college. “Hey, I thought they put up a valiant effort.”

“Whatever, man, there’s a reason you chose to come here instead of KU,” Ash retorted.

Dean snorted. “Well it didn’t have anything to do with the football team.”

Dean looked up just in time to catch Castiel strolling into the classroom. “Good morning everyone,” he greeted, walking over to the podium to pull up his slides. “I hope you all had a good weekend.” He was wearing a crisp white button up with a maroon tie today, Dean noted. He looked super sexy, as usual.

“Did you catch the game, Mr. N?” Ash called out from where Dean and his friends were sitting in the back.

“I did not. Did we win?”

“Yeah, we crushed it!” Ash pumped his fists into the air for emphasis.

The corners of Cas’s mouth turned up. “Glad to hear it.” He turned his attention back towards the podium, but not before his eyes passed over Dean briefly and he flashed a timid smile in his direction.

“Dude,” Charlie nudged him. “The sexy instructor totally just gave you a meaningful look. Did you see that?”

“What?” Dean acted confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he quickly dismissed.

Charlie narrowed her eyes at him in suspicion but didn’t push the subject.

“Today I thought we’d dive right into Chapter 2,” Cas began. “We’ve already covered the cases of the Natural Response for both parallel and series RLC circuits, but what if we consider a system with energy already stored inside the circuit by the time we analyze it. If this is the case, then we’ll need to understand how our Natural Response signal is affected by the existent energy. This is called the Step Response of a circuit. Let’s go ahead and derive the differential equations for this response.”

Cas uncapped a white board marker and began writing some complicated-looking equations on the board. Dean tried his best to pay attention but he’d gotten into this really bad habit of staring at Cas’s ass instead of the whiteboard whenever he was turned around. He couldn’t help it. Cas had a beautiful ass.

“And so we end up with this,” Castiel concluded after a few calculations. Dean stared at the final equation for _i L(t)_ for a moment before he realized that he could have used this equation on the last homework and it would have made his life much easier.

Dean raised his hand. 

“Yes, Dean?” Castiel nodded at him.

“So before, we had to find the integral of the voltage in order to calculate the current of the inductor, but can’t we just use this equation instead?”

“That’s exactly right, Dean.” He turned to address the whole class. “We’ve already solved a few Step Response circuits during the last lecture, but we had to use the indirect method because we didn’t know the equations for Step Response circuits. Now that we’ve derived the equations, we can use these instead.”

Another student raised his hand. “Yes--What is your name?” Castiel addressed the student.

“Daniel,” he answered. 

“Daniel,” Cas repeated. “What is your question?”

“So I’m a little confused about what makes this circuit a Step Response rather than a Natural Response.”

While Castiel launched into an explanation of the question, Dean felt another nudge at his side. “Why does Castiel know your name?” Charlie whispered.

“I’ve talked to him a few times, okay?” Dean hissed.

“Oh my god, you’re totally trying to sleep with him,” Charlie accused.

“Shh!” Dean glanced around to make sure no one heard her. “I’m not trying to sleep with him,” he told her in a quieter voice. 

“But you want to,” she teased. 

He couldn’t argue with that so he just ignored her. Castiel was now writing an example problem on the board. 

“And what is our _v o_ going to be?”

“Zero,” Dean muttered, in tandem with a few other students. 

“Right, because that was given to us. And what is _i L(0)_?”

“24 mA,” they responded. 

“Again, given to us. But what about _i C(0)_? Do we know that?”

A few “no”s were muttered by some students but apparently Dean’s “yes” was loud enough to be heard by Castiel because his eyes immediately landed on him. 

“Dean, how do we know the current of the capacitor?” he addressed to him.

Dean froze in his seat and felt his face heat a little bit. He was not expecting to be put on the spot like this. Asking questions in class was one thing, but answering them was completely nerve-wracking. “Because it shares the same current as the inductor?” he answered uncertainly. 

“Correct.” Castiel turned around to point at the diagram he drew for the example. “The components are in series, so they all have the same current,” he explained.

Dean blew out the breath he had been subconsciously holding. He turned to find that his friends were all either smirking at him or giving him thumbs up. Charlie just eyed him with even more suspicion.

Fortunately, Castiel didn’t pick on Dean for the rest of the lecture and Charlie didn’t continue her interrogation of him, at least until class ended. 

“Dude, there’s obviously something going on that you haven’t told me,” she accused him as they packed their things to leave. 

Dean signed, accepting the admission that she wasn’t going to let this drop. He glanced around to make sure his other friends were too involved with their conversation about football to hear him. He wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to broadcast that he was partners with his instructor. That might be breaking some hidden rule he didn’t know about.

“Listen,” he began. “You know that senior-level class I’m taking, Microcomputers?”

Charlie nodded. They both followed the stream of students filing out the door. On their way past Dean heard Castiel hastily announce, “Don’t forget that labs start this week.”

“Castiel is in my class. And we talk sometimes.” Dean chose to leave it at that.

Charlie’s mouth dropped open in shock. “He’s in your class? Like, as a student? Not a TA?”

“Yup,” Dean answered.

“Ha!” Charlie bounced on her feet in glee. “That’s so crazy! How does that even happen?”

“He was a double E major so the class wasn’t required for his undergrad. He’s taking it now as a grad student.”

“That is so perfect.” Charlie grinned. “You should totally be his BFF.”

Dean laughed. “I don’t know about that. But he did say we could be friends.”

“Aw! That’s so cute!” Charlie gushed. “I love Instructor Novak. He’s so adorable.”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded. _That’s one way to put it_ , he thought silently.

 

“Hey, man,” Dean greeted, settling into his chair for Microcomputers. 

“Good morning, Dean. How are your classes going?” Castiel asked him. He didn’t have his laptop out today, Dean noticed.

“Pretty good,” Dean replied, pulling out his notes. “I’m starting to get slammed with homework though, so I’m glad we got that Microcomputers assignment out of the way.”

“Is the Circuits homework manageable?” he asked earnestly. “I tried to shorten the number of problems that Dr. Parkins assigned. I always felt that his homework load was overbearing.”

“Oh yeah, you’re totally fine,” Dean assured. “The Circuits homework is going great. It’s just Discrete Math that I’m worried about.”

Castiel nodded solemnly. “I’ve heard mixed opinions about that class.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “Like, don’t get me wrong, I love the lectures and the professor makes the material really interesting, but the homework is just killing me. We have to write a math paper every week. About math proofs. It’s awful,” he concluded.

The corners of Cas’s lips twitched up. “I take it you’re not one for math theory then?”

“Definitely not,” Dean shuddered. “I could write code for hours at a time but making me write a math proof? Kill me.”

Castiel gave him an amused smile. “It’s a good thing you’re an excellent coder then,” he remarked, turning his attention to the starting lecture.

Dean tried not to let himself overanalyze that comment too much. Although, he did allow himself a moment of pride over the fact that he might have actually impressed his instructor on Saturday when they worked on the Microcomputers assignment together. Which, let’s be real, was fricken’ awesome. But it also meant that Dean had inadvertently raised Castiel’s expectations for future assignments. Fuck.

At least he didn’t have to worry about that until the next programming assignment, which was a week away. Dean was simultaneously glad and disappointed that he and Castiel finished the first assignment so early. On one hand, it was nice to get it out of the way, but it also meant that Dean didn’t really have an excuse to spend more time with his instructor outside of class. And now that he had literally gotten permission from Castiel to befriend him, he felt that he should somehow make an effort to do that. But how can he extend that friendship past this current state of kind-of-acquaintances without crossing any boundaries? He’ll have to play this out carefully.

 

After the lecture ended Dean timed his departure so that he and Castiel walked out of the classroom side-by-side. “So where you headed?” he asked casually as they ducked through the throng of students in the hall.

Castiel glanced at his watch. “I actually have a bit of a break before my office hours so I was going to have lunch at the café.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean opened the door for them to exit the engineering building. “I have a break too. Mind if I join you?”

Castiel looked at him in surprise as they stepped outside. “No, not at all,” he answered.

“Sweet,” Dean smiled. Together they walked the few steps to the little café nestled in the library next door. The lunch rush hadn’t hit yet so there were only a few people seated in the couches and chairs scattered around.

“So does anyone actually show up to your office hours this early in the semester?” Dean asked as they stepped in line to order their food.

“No,” Cas answered honestly. “But I expected that. I have plenty of work to do during those hours anyway so I’m not too bored.”

“I’ll have to stop by sometime just to bug you then,” Dean winked.

Castiel looked at him amusedly for a moment. “I wouldn’t mind the company.”

The comment made Dean grin as they ordered and found a seat to wait for their food to be prepared. 

“So what do you do when you aren’t holding office hours or giving lectures, then?” Dean looked over and asked.

Castiel tilted his head, considering the question. “Mostly grad work,” he settled on answering. “I go to a lot of meetings; with my advisor, my research team, the engineering department.” He paused for a moment, squinting down at the table between them. “In terms of hobbies, I do play piano—or, at least, I used to. Before I become so busy.”

“Piano? That’s cool, man.” 

Castiel turned his squint to Dean. “What are your hobbies, Dean?”

Dean shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I play a bit of guitar. And I was on the Robotics team in high school so that was pretty cool. Sometimes I still mess around with the bots they let me take home.”

“Is that how you knew you wanted to go into engineering?” Castiel asked.

“Yeah, that was a fun club. But I always figured I would go mechanical, because I love cars so much and I did most of the mechanical work in Robotics.”

“What made you decide to switch to Computer Engineering, then?”

Dean’s mouth tipped up in a smile as he thought back to his freshman year of college. “My first Computer Science class. I had this amazing professor,” he explained. “Dr. Watson?”

Castiel nodded in acknowledgement. “Yes, I had him for CIS 209. And I believe he’s the head of the CIS department.”

“Yeah,” Dean grinned. “He was so awesome. That was the class that made me fall in love with coding. Now, I can never go back.”

Castiel returned his smile. “I’m glad you found your passion, Dean. I wish I had been so lucky to decide what I wanted to do within my first year of college.”

“Did you start off as Undecided?”

“No, actually. I was an English major.”

“English?” Dean laughed. “What made you switch to electrical?”

“My parents greatly disapproved of my desire to be an author. They encouraged me to go into a more practical field. Fortunately, I had always been quite good at math, so I decided to try for a degree in mathematics after a semester of taking English courses. But then I found myself getting quite bored of the math I was learning. I felt that the theoretical concepts of math didn’t have very much application in my life. After that, I transitioned between Statistics, Physics, and even Accounting before I finally settled on Electrical Engineering.”

“Wow,” Dean whistled. “How long did that take you?”

“I was a junior when I started my Engineering classes. But I had already completed all of my general classes so I was still able to finish in three years.”

“Okay, that’s not too bad.” 

Castiel nodded in agreement as Dean heard their order numbers get called out from the front counter of the café. They both stood up to get their food and then settled back in their seats, changing the conversation to some of the classes they’ve taken so far and their favorite professors they’ve had, as well as the worst professors they’ve had.

“Man, I’m so glad I didn’t have to take Circuits II from Dr. Parkins,” Dean brought up suddenly, taking a large bite of his roast beef sandwich. “I’ve heard horror stories about him,” he continued between chewing. 

Castiel nodded solemnly, staring off to the left of Dean’s head and twirling his fork with his fingers. “That class was very difficult. He was an extremely intelligent and capable professor, but he didn’t make himself available enough for the difficulty of the course. I believe he held only one office hour every week, and he was very unhelpful in response to questions. He wanted us to figure out the solutions ourselves, which I can understand, but we weren’t given enough information to come to those solutions by ourselves,” Castiel huffed in frustration.

“Yeah that sounds awful,” Dean agreed. Then he grinned. “I guess I’m lucky to have you as my professor then.”

Castiel raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s only the second week of the semester, Dean. I could be just as unavailable as him, or worse.”

Dean laughed. “Nah. You couldn’t be unavailable if you tried. I’m your Microcomputers partner. And I have your number. You can’t escape me,” he grinned maliciously.

Castiel cocked his head in challenge. “Perhaps. But I could be entirely incompetent. I might be setting you up for failure.”

“No way, man. You’re brilliant. I know it.”

“How do you know?”

Dean struggled to answer for a moment. “You just have that look,” he answered lamely.

“What look?”

“You know…”

Castiel waited as Dean waved around in his direction, staring at Dean with a raised eyebrow. 

Dean looked over his instructor and took in his steel grey button-up, black tie, and perpetual bed-head hair. Honestly, the only thing missing from his whole sexy-professor look was the black-rimmed glasses to frame his sharp cheekbones. But he couldn’t just tell him that. Dean eventually settled with, “Nerdy.”

The answer startled a laugh out of Castiel. He shook his head. “Nerdy,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Dean shrugged. “Total professor look.”

“But I’m not a professor,” Castiel countered.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Instructor. Whatever.”

Castiel sent him another smile as he looked down to glance at his watch. “Ah. Unfortunately, I have to get going. It was very nice of you to join me for lunch, Dean.”

“Yeah, sure thing, man.” As they stood up and gathered their stray wrappers Dean glimpsed the time displayed on the clock to his right and noted that Castiel was a few minutes late to his office hours. Oh well. There probably weren’t any students waiting for him the second week of the semester.

They exited the café and walked a few steps together before they had to part directions. If it weren’t for the Discrete Math recitation that Dean had to go to, he totally would have stuck with Cas and continued bugging him during his office hours. But he’ll just have to wait to do that another day. “I’ll see you later, Cas,” he waved, turning towards the Math building.

“Goodbye Dean.”

 

On Thursday, Dean walked into Engineering Room 203 for his first Circuits II lab of the semester. He smirked when he noticed a few of his friends already gathered around the center lab station, messing around with the equipment. 

“Wait, I think this button turns it on,” he heard Andy say.

“You’re going to break it, idiot.” Victor slapped his hands away.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Dean remarked as he stopped beside them, peering at the fancy machines his friends were currently gawking at.

“Welcome to lab, brutha,” Benny grinned, leaning around Andy and Victor to greet Dean. 

Dean nodded at him and glanced around the lab. Most of the lab stations were already occupied, and the students were all chatting idly as they waited for the lab section to officially start. There was one girl with short dark hair writing some diagrams on the small whiteboard at the front. Probably the TA for the lab. Checking the clock, Dean saw that there was only one minute until lab started.

“Where’s Charlie and Ash?” Dean asked his friends.

“They’re in the other lab section,” Victor answered.

“Yeah, on Tuesdays,” Andy piped up. 

“Ah.” Dean didn’t have much time to be disappointed by that information, because the girl at the front of the lab was turned around and trying to get everyone’s attention.

She herself as Hannah and apparently was, in fact, the TA for the lab. She spent the next fifteen minutes or so talking about how they should format their lab notebooks and some basic safety rules for the lab. Then she explained some basic concepts they needed to know to begin today’s exercises, saying that if they follow the instructions in their workbooks they should finish pretty quickly. Then she left them to figure out the rest by themselves. 

“Let me know if you have any questions,” Hannah concluded.

The room became filled with the chattering of students once again as they began working through the lab of the day.

“Alright,” Dean turned to face his friends and clapped his hands together. “Who’s my partner?”

Andy and Victor were already engaged in an argument about whether they should read the oscilloscope manual or just wing it. Benny peered around them to share a look with Dean.

“That would be me,” he said. 

“Fine by me,” Dean laughed.

 

The good thing about Benny was that he and Dean worked really well together. They were both Computer Engineer majors, so they thought similarly and were usually on the same page about how to approach certain problems. That seemed to be an advantage for them with this lab. Most of the exercises for the lab were just reading through equipment manuals and answering some basic questions about how to use them and what their internal impedances were. Then, they had to create some example circuits on their breadboards to practice using the oscilloscope to analyze them. He and Benny were able to pull up the sine-waves for the output voltages of the first two circuits just fine, but the third one was a different story. For that circuit, they had to analyze two different output voltages at the same time, and to do that, they had to adjust the input voltage to produce a 10 V zero-to-peak sine-wave from the generator. But the default input sine-wave was centered around 0 V, so they had to find some way to shift it up.

“Man, I’m telling you, the manual says that this dial is the way to do it.”

“Brutha, I’m turning the dial right now and it’s not working.”

Dean groaned in frustration. The problem with being so ahead of everyone else was that they couldn’t ask any of the other students how to do things, because they hadn’t reached that point of the lab yet. Andy and Victor were still trying to construct the first circuit of the day. Dean looked up from the manual and craned his head in search of their TA. When he spotted her he waved to catch her attention. “Could we get some help over here?”

Hannah walked briskly to cross the room, stopping once she reached their station. “What’s the problem?” she asked. 

“So we’re on the last part of the lab,” Dean explained. “We want to produce a zero-to-peak sine-wave right?”

“That’s correct.”

“Okay, so we’re pretty sure we’re supposed to turn this dial to adjust the position of the generated sine-wave, but it doesn’t seem to be working.” Dean reached around Benny and turned the dial to demonstrate.

Hannah looked between the sine-wave generator and the since-wave displayed on the oscilloscope, her eyebrows furrowed slightly in confusion. “That is the right dial,” she said finally. 

Dean threw a quick I-told-you-so look to Benny.

Hannah leaned down a bit to fiddle with the dial herself, staring at the oscilloscope screen as she did so. “Is that the input voltage?” she asked, gesturing to the displayed sine-wave.

“Yup.”

They watched as the wave jerked slightly as she turned the dial, but it remained resolutely centered around 0 V. 

“What’s going on with you guys?” Andy asked suddenly, appearing behind them. 

“We’re trying to adjust the position of the sine-wave on the generator,” Benny supplied.

Victor slid into view behind Andy. “Oh I remember reading about that in the manual. There should be a dial labelled ‘voltage offset’.”

“That’s what we’re trying,” Dean told him.

Hannah started changing some settings on the oscilloscope, but nothing she tried seemed to work either. Just when Dean was starting to lose his patience with this stupid equipment he happened to glance up and catch the sight of a familiar mess of dark hair walk into the room and scan his eyes around the room slowly. 

“Hey Cas!” he called out without thinking. Castiel startled, turning his gaze on Dean, looking briefly surprised. “Come help us with this,” Dean waved him over.

Dean’s friends also looked up to see who he was calling to and Hannah immediately straightened when she noticed Castiel. 

They watched as Castiel walked over to them, his expression turning to one of concern when he noticed the other students gathered around Dean’s lab station, along with Hannah. “What’s going on?” he asked as he rounded the lab station to stop behind them.

Hannah stepped away from the equipment to make room for him, all the while explaining the situation. “They’re trying to adjust the offset of the sine-wave but the generator dial isn’t cooperating.” She turned the dial a bit to show him.

Dean was still seated nearest the sine-wave generator, so when Castiel stepped in close to view the controls, Dean could feel the heat of Castiel’s body along his back as he leaned over him. Dean swallowed thickly, absent-mindedly wiping his hands along his jeans as he tried not to notice the subtle cinnamon scent wafting off of Castiel from behind him, and not get distracted by the flexing muscles in the arm that Castiel just draped on the desk next to Dean as he leaned even closer. _And don’t even think about what those fingers can do._ Dean tore his eyes away from Cas’s hands before his thoughts could turn dirtier than he’s willing to risk, instead looking up at the concentrated face Castiel was making at the machine. They all watched him intensely as he scowled at the sine-wave generator for the span of about 3 seconds before reaching up and deliberately placing two fingers on the dial. Then he pulled on it and it popped out, just slightly. He turned to look at the oscilloscope screen and they all turned with him, watching the sine-wave slide gracefully along with the dial turned by Castiel’s fingers. 

“Oh,” Hannah said softly. “I forgot about that.”

Castiel straightened up in satisfaction. “Does that fix your problem?” he asked the four students currently gaping at the oscilloscope.

“Okay, what the hell just happened?” Andy turned to Castiel, bewildered. 

“Ah.” Castiel pointed to the tiny lettering underneath the magic dial. “For AC voltage, you need to pull out the knob. Otherwise, the voltage offset is for DC.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t notice that,” Benny laughed, shaking his head. 

Hannah nodded solemnly in Cas’s direction. “Thank you, Castiel.”

“Yeah thanks, man,” Dean grinned. “I think we’ve got it from here,” he looked between Hannah and Cas. 

Castiel nodded and gave him a brief smile before he and Hannah both turned around to help some other students around the lab. Andy and Victor also retreated back to their stations while Dean and Benny finished up their circuit analysis and calculations. Well, Benny was doing most of the work at this point. Dean was too distracted replaying that moment over and over in his head. The fact that Cas only needed to stare at the equipment for a few seconds and he already knew the solution without even touching the thing, and after both Benny and the TA tried messing around with it...That was probably the hottest thing Dean had ever seen. 

Okay, so maybe Dean had a bit of an intellectual kink. Sue him. It was fucking sexy. And now he was actually starting to get hard in the middle of lab. Fuck.

Dean clenched his fists into his jeans as he tried to concentrate on the Kirchhoff's equation in front of him instead of thinking about scowling features and narrowed blue eyes.


End file.
